


Everywhere I Go

by Terr



Series: The Couple & the Others [2]
Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27300703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terr/pseuds/Terr
Summary: Few weeks after making their relationship public, Ethan decides to take Chiara with him to Providence.Set few weeks after the gala, so in the first half of Chapter 18
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Series: The Couple & the Others [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026955
Kudos: 19





	Everywhere I Go

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: none? I feel like this is absolutely harmless but if you find something worth warning, let me know please
> 
> Author’s note: This follows the Count Me In fic, so for the better experience, I recomment to read that first. However, if you don’t want to, it is readable as a one shot too. I love Alan Ramsey and I just want him to be happy okay? I kind of broke my own heart while thinking about how unfair life is towards him

“And that’s why my sister is not talking to me now,” Bryce ended his speech with his typical wide grin, shrugging carelessly as he finished eating his fries.

Both, Chiara and Elijah burst out into loud laugh, attracting the attention of every other person in cafeteria. The story itself wouldn’t be that funny, however the way Bryce didn’t hesitate to give them a detailed description of Keiki’s face expressions caused happy tears to fall from Chiara’s eyes, as she couldn’t contain her giggles.

“Oh crap,” Chiara muttered when her ringing phone interrupted the cheerful atmosphere at the table. “It’s Ethan.”

“Calling as a doctor or as a _booooyfriend_?” Bryce teased her, gaining an eye roll from Chiara in return.

Before she picked her phone up, she checked her pager, making sure that Ethan didn’t try to get her attention through it without her noticing. It was greatly uncommon for him to call her while they were both working, especially when calling her meant talking about not-work-related topics.

“Hello?” she picked up at last, confusion audible in her voice.

“Rookie,” she could see Ethan nod at the other side of the line as he spoke. “Where are you? I wanted to talk to you.”

“Uhm, I am having lunch in the cafeteria with boys. Why? Do you need me for something? You could’ve paged me.”

“It’s not about work. Just wait for me, okay? I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Without giving her a chance to ask more questions or even respond with an ‘okay’, Ethan hung up, leaving her terribly worried about his reasons to call her.

No matter how urgent their private issues seemed, they always managed to bring them home with them, to talk about it after their shifts. When they were at work, they were working. It was that simple for them, a rule that has hardly ever been broken.

“He called as a boyfriend,” she spoke finally, noticing how both, Bryce and Elijah were looking at her with their eyebrows raised. “He will stop by.”

Just as she said that, the door to the cafeteria opened and Ethan stopped just for a second, searching the room with his eyes for a sign of the young redhead he needed to see. Against his better judgement, he smiled as he finally spotted her, cheeks flushed from the laugh she has just had several minutes ago.

Chiara noticed how some residents and even one attending stared as Ethan crossed the room, obviously ignoring the fact that he was about to sit next to the woman he kissed at the gala few weeks ago. They stared with hearts in their eyes and wishful smiles at their faces and even if it was embarrassing to admit, Chiara knew that their expressions mirrored her own.

“Chiara I think you might be drooling,” Bryce whispered, causing Elijah to laugh loudly for the second time in ten minutes.

“Hey,” Ethan smiled softly at her as he sat down next to her and then nodded in boys’ direction. “Bryce, Elijah.”

“Well helloooo, my buddy,” Bryce grinned and patted Ethan’s shoulder enthusiastically. “How ya doin’?”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ethan muttered: “Lahela stop please”, while Chiara laughed, shaking her head.

“What has gotten into you today, Bryce? Do you need to replace a single ‘o’ with several annoying ‘oooo’s’ in every word?”

Shrugging carelessly again, Bryce opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, Elijah put his arm on Bryce’s shoulder and gestured towards the door.

“I think we should go before you extend the list of people not talking to you.”

Even though unhappy with the suggestion, Bryce agreed and a minute later, Chiara and Ethan were left alone to discuss whatever Ethan came to discuss.

“So? What is bothering you?” Chiara asked openly.

“Nothing is _bothering_ me,” Ethan replied, not quite looking at her, instead reaching for her hand on the table, interlacing their fingers together.

Chiara was aware of people observing them and of the fact that such gesture of affection would cause yet another wave of gossips in the hospital.

Ethan couldn’t care less about what would people say at this point. Ever since their kiss, people were talking about them and it didn’t really matter what Chiara and Ethan did or didn’t do.

They were holding hands now and so people would talk about Dr. Do-Not-Talk-To-Me being whipped. If they didn’t hold their hands, people would talk about troubles in paradise because ‘they didn’t even touch while talking’.

“I am going to visit my father in Providence this weekend.”

“Oh,” Chiara opened her mouth, not quite believing that he would look for her only to tell her that he would be gone for the weekend. “That’s great! It’s been some time since you last visited Providence, right? Two days out of Boston and with your dad, it will be good for you.”

“The thing is,” Ethan spoke, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “You have a free weekend and-“

“I think I do, let me check,” Chiara interrupted him, reaching for her phone to check her calendar.

“You do, I already checked.”

_Or rather, I made sure that you would have a free weekend._

“However, I wanted to ask you if, by any chance, you would want to go to Providence with me? I mean, I survived the brunch thing with your friends and now I would like to introduce you to dad.”

“I have already met your father, Ethan,” Chiara laughed softly. “Several times.”

“Yes, but that was different. I would like to, well, introduce you as a… woman I am dating.”

His cheeks were deeply flushed at this point, his hands gently squeezing her in steady rhythm, trying to calm his own nerves down.

“I would like that very much,” she smiled at him. “Is your dad going to roast me the way my friends roasted you?”

Ethan laughed, truly and openly laughed and replied: “God I hope so.”

With a quick kiss on the top of Chiara’s head, he stood up as his pager went off, leaving her to finish her lunch with a smile on her lips.

˜

“Your dad know that I am coming with you, right?” Chiara asked nervously as she stepped out of Ethan’s car, looking at the house in front of her. It was painted in a light blue color, the bushes surrounding a path leading to the front door precisely trimmed.

“Of course. He texted me in the morning, saying that they were both looking forward to seeing you.”

“Both? Both _who_?” Chiara turned on her heels, her eyes wide with shock. Surely Louise wouldn’t be here today, would she? Her time in the rehab clinic wasn’t over yet.

“Dad and Jenner,” Ethan replied flatly, getting their bags out of the trunk.

A very audible sigh of relief left Chiara’s mouth at that, her mind instantly calming down at the picture of Ethan’s – or more Alan’s – dog. It would be their first meeting and Chiara was equally nervous about meeting Alan as Ethan’s girlfriend and meeting Jenner, knowing rather well that Jenner’s opinion mattered to Ethan more than opinions of most people.

Locking his car, Ethan took Chiara’s hand and led her to the front door, smiling down at her, all the tension that collected in his body for the past few weeks seemingly gone.

Ethan didn’t resemble the Dr. Ramsey at all at this moment, his form relaxed as he knocked on the door, quietly humming one of Frank Sinatra’s songs they listened to on their way here.

“Chiara, Ethan!” Alan smiled widely as he opened the door, letting them both come in. Before he could as much as hug Ethan, the ball of brown fur sprinted through the hall and as soon as Jenner spotted Ethan, he put both his front paws on Ethan’s torso, barking excitedly.

Chiara shook Alan’s hand and he kissed both her cheeks politely. “Lunch is almost ready,” he smiled and led her to the sunny living room, granting Ethan some time to catch up with his best friend.

Seated in a comfortable armchair, Chiara took her surrounding in while Alan left to the kitchen to make them a coffee. The room wasn’t big, the huge window dominating as it provided both, light coming into the room and a beautiful view to the garden.

Before Chiara could examine the photos on the top of fireplace, both Jenner and Ethan came to the room and it was her time to impress the dog.

“Hello there,” she smiled as she kneeled down, letting Jenner to sniff and then lick her palm. “What a good boy do we have here, hmmm? Yes, it’s you, of course it’s you.”

All the tension was gone at that point, Jenner happily licking not only her hands but also her neck and her face, Chiara laughing and rubbing his belly happily while Ethan stood by the fireplace, his arms crossed, smiling affectionately at the scene in front of him.

Seeing that his presence was no longer recognized, Ethan decided to help his dad to finish the lunch, hoping that maybe in their moment of privacy, he could make sure that there would be no embarrassing stories about his childhood shared today.

˜

It was all for nothing.

As soon as they finished eating and moved back to the living room to have their afternoon tea, Alan grinned at the two young doctors seated on the couch next to each other, Ethan’s arm casually hugging Chiara’s shoulders.

“So… dating, huh? How long?”

Ethan blushed and cleared his throat, thinking about the right answer. “Few weeks,” he replied after all.

“And unofficially?”

Chiara laughed at the question, the fact that Alan indeed knew his son both surprising and delighting her. Not wanting to make Ethan angry or uncomfortable, she decided not to answer that.

“Few weeks,” Ethan repeated, although it was obvious that not a single person in the room believed that. “The gala I’ve been telling you about the other day? That would be it.”

The mention of gala served them well, giving them a chance to talk about hospital for a long time, about the fact that it wouldn’t be saved anyway, about their work at free clinic.

They both intentionally avoided talking about the future, about what would happen when Edenbrook closes for real. Alan was polite enough not to ask.

Chiara was nervously waiting for Alan to start asking questions. After the trick her friends pulled on Ethan, she deserved to be interrogated by him. She was dating a respected doctor, famous diagnostician and a rich man after all. It was rather natural for his parents – well, his father – to make sure that she wasn’t using him.

_I just need to be honest and everything will be fine._

The interrogation never came. Instead, when it looked like it would come, Alan asked her the question she hoped to hear.

“So, Chiara. I doubt Ethan has told you much about his childhood. Do you want to hear the stories of troublemaker Ethan? I have my two favorites.”

“Dad, you have to be kidding me,” Ethan muttered, squinting his eyes on the older man.

Next to him, Chiara jumped on the couch of excitement, nodding. “Yes, _please._ Tell me anything embarrassing. Anything. He like to pretend that such moments never happened in his life.”

“Do you remember our fish, Ethan?” Alan smiled mischievously at his son and from Ethan’s expression, he knew exactly what was about to come.

“I was six!” he exclaimed, crossing his arms at his chest.

“My brother came to visit us one summer,” Alan turned to Chiara, ignoring Ethan’s remarks about betrayal. “He used to smoke a lot back then, however me or Louise weren’t smoking and so there was no ashtray in this whole house. I found an old mason jar and gave it to him, so that he could use that instead. We didn’t throw the whole mason jar away the moment he left the house and Ethan took his chance. At the time, we had this huge aquarium here in the living room, full of fish. There were, like, fifty fish in it and as a six-year-old, we let Ethan feed them so that he would learn about being responsible. One day, I got back from work and almost all of the fish were dead. Really, maybe seven or eight survived. And I was so shocked because it’s not common thing to happen and I asked Ethan if he fed them that day and without a second thought, he said that he did feed them with the ash Uncle Thomas left here, because he wanted to see how they would react. I still remember him saying _‘It’s a pity they died. But at least we are left with the strongest ones now._ ’”

“He didn’t do that,” Chiara laughed and turned to Ethan, waiting for his reaction. The shrug of his shoulders confirming that the story she just heard was right.

“Well, some things never change. Your strategy with interns is pretty similar.”

“Yet, here you are. That makes you one of the strongest ones, you know.”

She smiled at him softly, knowingly and turned back to Alan, greedy for more.

“My absolutely favorite is the one about Perrie McKingsley.”

Ethan’s eyes widened once again and he shook his head abruptly, looking at his father. “Dad, really, that won’t be necessary.”

“Okay now I have to hear it,” Chiara grinned wickedly.

“He was ten or eleven at the time, I can’t quite remember. It was my grandmother’s death anniversary and even though, as great-grandmother to Ethan, she wasn’t a big part of his life, he always agreed to go to the cemetery with me at the anniversary. That year was no exception and so we bought this beautiful bouquet and put it on the grave. Little did I know that the next day was Perrie McKingsley’s birthday – she was Ethan’s classmate and his first crush. Very nice girl indeed. Ethan wanted to impress her but was too shy to talk to me about it, about what he could give her as a present and so he came up with a genius idea. That morning, he left the house early and stopped at the cemetery on his way to school. _He took the flowers_ we put on the grave the day before and gave them to the poor girl. He would never tell the truth, but I met Perrie’s mother two days after that and she told me how thoughtful it was of Ethan to get Perrie such beautiful bouquet.”

Chiara had to cover her mouth with her hand to tame all the loud sounds leaving it when Alan finished the story. Tears streaming down her face, she had troubles catching her breath between the laughing.

“Who would believe that you were such a gentleman, Ramsey,” she spoke finally when she calmed down. “The girl was very lucky.”

“I am glad you are having fun, Rookie,” Ethan said dryly, trying his hardest to maintain his poker face, even though the truth was that seeing his Chiara this happy and free of worries, laughing with his father while petting Jenner, it was a picture he wished to remember forever.

˜

The rest of the day was filled with small talks about Alan’s work and Jenner, about Chiara’s life back in San Francisco. Alan showed her all of Ethan’s photos, from the cute baby ones to the pretty awkward high school ones.

Ethan pretended to be annoyed by the fact that his dad and Chiara became such a good friends, finding their entertainment in Ethan’s suffering, however every time they were not looking, he was smiling like a fool, his chest full of this unfamiliar warm feeling.

He was asleep in his old room now and as much as Chiara tried to rest too, the sleep wouldn’t come to her.

She decided to get a water in the kitchen and give it another try later.

As she stepped downstairs, she was startled by the light coming out of the living room – it was past midnight.

“Chiara,” Alan smiled at her from the couch, the bottle of beer in his hand as he stared into the fire. “Troubles sleeping?”

She nodded and took a seat next to him, the water long forgotten.

“I was just thinking about Ethan,” Alan broke the silence, turning his eyes to her.

They were the same color as his son’s, the blue darker than the bright sky but brighter than the stormy one. His gaze was as intense too, as if he could see straight into her head, getting his answers without needing to ask questions.

The only difference was that his eyes were surrounded by happy wrinkles, the ones a person only gets when they smile too often.

Ethan’s wrinkled weren’t permanent around the corners of his eyes. He didn’t smile often enough. His signature wrinkles were the ones between his brows, the ones a person only gets when they worry too much.

“I am glad he’s found you, Chiara. I have never seen him so content. So in love.”

Chiara froze at his words. She froze at the ease he said them with.

“Oh, he’s… he’s not in love,” she laughed nervously. “He doesn’t believe in such things.”

“You are the first girl he has ever brought home with him,” Alan grinned. “Surely that speaks for itself.”

Shock overtaking her, Chiara forgot to close her mouth for a long moment.

“You are kidding. He is almost forty, I can’t be the first one.”

Alan laughed at her statement whole-heartedly, the sound so common for him and so rare to hear from his son.

“You are. And I know what he says, about me not really knowing him, but he is still my kid and I can assure you, he is _so_ in love.” Alan took a deep breath, sipping his bear for a long moment. “The girl I was telling you about today, Perrie? She was his first crush, his first love, the first girl that made him blush when he spoke to her. The first to bring those ‘in-love’ sparks into his eyes. He was ten, a kid. The same kid he was at eleven, when Louise left. He’s never really gotten over that, over her leaving us and I don’t blame him. He was just a kid. The first time I have seen those sparks in his eyes, he was ten. The last time I have seen them, he was eleven. He was just a kid, _he was just my baby son,_ when all those adult things happened to him and I blamed myself for so long that I couldn’t protect him from that hurt.”

Alan’s voice shook and he took another sip of his drink, steading himself so that he could finish his speech.

For the past twenty-six years, he has never said these words to anyone.

“I stopped believing that those would ever return. All the way through the high school, Ethan never even mentioned a girl. He avoided women, he didn’t trust them and who was I to change his mind? It was my wife leaving us after all. And then, in his med school he let it slip that there was a certain girl he was seeing, but talking about her didn’t bring those sparks into his eyes. He was twenty-three and he was less in love than a ten-year-old Ethan. There was something there when he told me about you for the first time, last year. His Rookie. I could see how his face lit up at the mention of you, how his lips turned up so slightly anyone but his father would miss it. He probably never mentioned it, but I was with Ethan two days before the gala and when he said that you two would go together to represent your team, that was when I saw those sparks again, Chiara. After twenty-seven years, I have seen my son’s eyes light up with the force only love could produce.”

Chiara was smiling and at the same time, she felt like crying.

Crying for a man Ethan could be, hadn’t he been broken.

Crying for Alan, losing his wife and his happy little boy at the same day.

“Ethan can be difficult, I know. But please, as his father and as a person who loves him more than he has ever loved anyone or anything, I beg you to be patient with him when things get difficult. Because you are the only person I have ever believed could make Ethan truly and unconditionally happy again.”

Chiara nodded, tears spilling down on her cheeks now and before she could do anything, Alan was hugging her.

“Goodnight, Chiara,” he smiled as he broke the hug. After wishing him a goodnight too, Chiara got back into the room Ethan was sleeping in and tried to get into the bed as quietly as possible.

“I am not sleeping,” Ethan muttered, turning to his side so that he could face her. With his curls disheveled around his head and sleepy eyes, he looked so much younger it almost surprised Chiara. “I’ve heard voices from downstairs.”

“Yes, I’ve been talking to your dad,” she whispered softly, deciding whether she should tell him the truth or not. Almost immediately, she decided to keep her conversation with Alan to herself. “There were many more embarrassing stories to be told, you know.”

“I don’t get how, no matter who we are with, I end up to be the embarrassed one. All the time. I was thinking about inviting Naveen over for dinner later this week, but I am strongly reconsidering now.”

“Oh my God, yes, that’s totally happening. Awkward intern Ethan, that would be my new favorite thing.”

“I have never been an awkward intern.”

“I think Naveen will be the judge of that,” she smirked, rolling Ethan on his back so that she could straddle him. He groaned at the idea of Naveen telling Chiara yet another stories about his past. “Well, it’s not my fault that you are so embarrassable, Ethan.”

“That’s not even a word, Ray.”

“Uhm, it just left my mouth, so I guess it is now. I will text Naveen myself in the morning.”

She leaned down to kiss him, his hot body and soft lips making her mind race into dangerous territory.

“Don’t worry, once we visit my mom and sister, you will be satisfied. I bet Alicia has already my TOP 5 awkward moments written and ready to be shared,” she murmured between the kissed.

Ethan chuckled at that and biting her earlobe softly, he whispered: “I am booking the tickets to San Francisco right now.”


End file.
